We are finding that we are part of a life that comes in cycles. We go through slower times and then we go through crazy times. This is the tail end (we think) of one of the crazy times. Thanks for praying for us over these past two weeks. There was an 8 day stretch where Brian put in 113 hours before getting a day to work at home! Brian was on another island for 6 of those 8 days traveling with some of our other teammates here to get an airplane ready to sell. It needs to sell soon so we can get some money to ship our helicopter here.
Well, all that work has paid off! We finished the inspection on the Cessna 180 and it is ready for sale. A potential buyer has been quoted a price and we are now just waiting to hear back from him. When we installed the overhauled prop and propeller governor it was immediately apparent that we had fixed the problem with the plane. Thanks for praying! This was an issue that we’ve been losing sleep over because if it wasn’t the prop/governor combo, it meant we had to tear the engine down and replace some internal seals.
When we finished the Cessna 180 we rushed back to Mindanao to get our other plane repaired and flying. But before getting to Mindanao, Brian was able to finish the process of getting his temporary Philippine pilot’s license. That was a huge blessing. We arrived in Mindanao late Sunday night and went right to work on “405” first thing Monday. We replaced the entire fuel system – fuel pump, fuel control unit, fuel flow divider, injector lines and injectors. It was a major undertaking. While we were working on it we noticed a crack in our exhaust, and then another, and then another! All three pieces of our exhaust had cracked!
We couldn’t believe it. We stock parts for exhaust cracks, but not a whole system because none of us have ever seen them crack like that. Thankfully JAARS has a shop just down the road with a very experienced aircraft exhaust welder who dropped what he was doing and got our system repaired. We were able to push through the delays, and had the airplane in the air for its flight on Friday morning. We even took a day “slow” during the week.
Thanks so much for praying. This was a very trying week for all of us. While Brian was away the power company has been diverting power to a festival in town for 8 hours at a time. So Bailey (6 months pregnant now) and Maycie were at home with no fans and no lights. To make it worse our fridge broke the day Brian got to the hangar in Luzon and he couldn’t come back to deal with it. Our friends and coworkers banded together to take care of Bailey so that was a blessing!
God is so gracious during these times to give us what we need to push through. We are leaving this week to go to Manila for some “baby shopping” and to say goodbye to a good friend who is heading home after serving here as a short-term missionary.
[…] Contact « A Big Push. A Big Reward […]